1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a medium suitable for in vitro culturing normal human epidermal melanocyte.
2. Prior Art
In vitro culturing of normal cells derived from human is a key technique for investigation in many fields including medical and pharmaceutical, or development of drug, cosmetics and the like. Culturing of normal human melanocyte in vitro is a useful steps for studying, such as biosynthesis of melanine in human skin or whitening of the skin. In order to culture said cells, known basal media for culturing animal cells such as MCDB153 or M199 containing supplements, for example growth factors, such as epidermal growth factor and fibroblast growth factor, hormones such as insulin and triiodothyronine, carriers such as cholera toxin and transferrin, bovine pituitary extract, bovine hypothalamus extract and fetal bovine serum (FBS).
However, those conventional media cannot provide enough growth without comparatively large amount of serum. In addition, while the morphology of melanocytes in vivo characterized by dendrite formation and ramification, high population of melanocyte cultured in vitro with a conventional media shows quite different such as bipolar morphology. Dendrite formation of in vitro cultured cells can be promoted by adding an agent that increase intracellular levels of cAMP, such as dbcAMP or IBMX. However, these agents cause suppression of cell proliferation (K, Nakazawa et. al., Pigment Cell Research (1993) 6, 406-416).